Meaning
by Dylan Storm
Summary: A guilty conscience, a broken girl. The catalyst, the abandonment of morals and ideals. Where does he go from here?
1. Hail to the Light

**A/N: So I own nothing of Gossip Girl! All right to CW and to the author of the books! Don't sue, I a poor college kid! Nothing to take! **

**Enjoy! Reviews appreciated! This is my first sojourn into Gossip Girl... But after the last episode, my muse wouldn't let this out of my head... More to come!  
**

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Vanessa was nowhere to be found. He had looked all around the gallery, asked his dad, walked to her place, stopped by his. She disappeared from the showing, and he couldn't figure out why.

Without something to distract him, Dan found himself replaying the night in his head. He couldn't shake his guilt, his chest was constricted at the very thought of what he had stooped to. Dan had prided himself on being better that the Upper East Side. Instead, he played their game tonight.

Walking down the street, hands in pockets, Dan did not want to go home at the moment. Couldn't stand to see his face in the mirror. Instead, he meandered around Brooklyn, wallowing.

_Blair and Chuck were going to self destruct at some point, I just, I may have helped it along._

The look on Serena's face as he nonchalantly discusses his destruction of her best friend's possibility of love. He never wanted to relive that.

Dan wanted to blame someone else, to justify himself, but he was at a lost. For someone so critical of the manipulations of the UES, he had just blithely misled someone into their greatest heartbreak.

Heartbreak. He hadn't thought that Blair Waldorf or Chuck Bass even capable of possessing a beating heart, let alone that they could feel. Loss, pain, despair. He had a hand in that.

The chill of the night broke through his thoughts, and Dan realized that he had wandered out of Brooklyn. Looking at his watch, it was getting really late. He still didn't know what to do with himself.

He stood on the corner. The night was crisp and clear, the faintest breeze stinging his cheeks. Serena was off chasing the chance at new love. What was he doing? He had once longed for romance, passion, love and happy endings. It hadn't happened for Dan, and look where he was now. Why had he ruined that for someone else, even someone as foul as Chuck Bass?

Making a decision, he turned towards the left, and made his way to the nearest subway stop.

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He stared up at the cold, grandiose building in front of him. Blair's building was imposing, and he was intimidated by the architecture alone, let alone the thought of the broken hearted queen bee up in the penthouse.

He was still across the street, working up the courage to go inside, when a limo pulled up to the front of the building. Expecting what he saw next, he was nevertheless drawn to the entrance as he watched Chuck make his way inside. Dan had thought things had ended horribly between Blair and Chuck, and he was curious as to why Chuck was going to see her. Staying behind enough to stay out of sight, Dan followed him like a moth to a flame.

He had let himself in, having no problems getting past the doorman, who had seen him a few times with Serena, enough to get by. The housekeeper didn't seem to be around, so Dan made his way upstairs. Knowing that this might be his death sentence, his curiosity drove him forward, to stand in the hallway as he listened to Chuck and Blair bury their feelings and let go.

As Chuck broke Blair with the promise of someday, Dan's conscience screamed at him. The advice he gave to Blair echoed in his ears. He was brought back to the here and now, when he realized that their conversation had ended, and he dashed around a corner. His instincts proved correct, and Chuck exited, blindly pushing towards the elevator. The way he leaned his head against the door, waiting for the elevator to come, and the sigh that escaped him, spoke volumes to Dan. Chuck could be human. The elevator doors closed on Chuck's sagging shoulders, and Dan couldn't watch anymore.

Instead, his curiosity rose, and as Chuck left, Dan made his way to Blair's door. The girl he had always deemed a bitch, the ice queen whose manipulation never ended, was broken in front of him. Silent tears kissed her cheeks, and shoulders shook hard enough to shake the table she was leaning against. He rapped his knuckles on the door, announcing his intrusion into her vulnerability.

She wiped her eyes, but didn't turn around.

"Crawling back to me already Bass? No resolve?" The bitterness and sadness wove a strange tone into her voice.

He hesitated, "Um, it's Dan."

The speed at which she turned around, and at which her face dropped into a stoic mask lacking in emotion, baffled him.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

He looked down in his feet, looked at the expensive silk sheets on her bed, the little touches in the room that screamed Blair, really anywhere but at her.

"I, um, I heard about how it turned out, and I wanted to say that…"

"I do not need cheap Brooklyn pity." The coldness in her voice caused him to finally look at her.

She was trying to hid it, but Dan had never seen her so vulnerable, broken.

"I, uh, I know. This isn't pity, I just…. Bad endings, I've known them, and well, I just wanted to say that…" He babbled, not liking the effect that her dark eyes where hard and penetrating.

She looked away from him, and spoke in a rare moment of civility.

"You were right though. I should have been careful, I tried to be when it was happening, but you were right…"

The reference to the last piece of advice that Dan had given her pierced his conscience. He had purposefully sabotaged her with that advice, and here she was acknowledging that he had helped her. The urge to confess, to apologize, to give her hope that it could work out, was on the tip of his tongue.

The way she leaned against the desk , coffee colored curls cascading around a face clear of make-up, clear of animosity, stopped him. He didn't want to turn her against him. Inexplicably, the thought of Blair's hurt and anger being focused towards him made him squirm more that Serena's reaction had earlier.

She looked lost in thought, forgetting that Cabbage Patch had invaded her space, her sovereignty. He cleared his throat, but she didn't look up.

"Well, I'm sorry that it happened, and uh, well, if you, well… If you need anything, if you could lower yourself to it, you can call me." He avoided looking at her, and with no response, turned to leave the doorway.

He was almost out of sight, when he faintly heard a thank you follow him out of the door.

_Coward_, he thought to himself as his entered the elevator. _You don't deserve a thank you, even from Blair Waldorf. _

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Weeks later, the guilt had receded a little. Serena was busy with Aaron, Vanessa was AWOL most of the time, and Blair in a very un-Blair like fashion, stayed away from the private eye. Dan fell into a routine that focused on writing and school. Social interaction, for the first time in a while, fell away.

But writing wasn't helping him. Everything he wrote seemed superficial and cheap.

And then she called.


	2. Never Very Bright

**A/N: So I own nothing of Gossip Girl! All right to CW and to the author of the books! Don't sue, I am a poor college kid! Nothing to take! **

**Here is chapter two! I don't know where this story is heading, I don't write with outlines, I just write. See where it takes the story. So yea! Read, review, tell me what you think, tell me suggestions, anything! I will probably update every week or so, depending on my course load! Enjoy!**

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Dan had fallen from the attention of most Upper East Siders. It had been weeks since his dad's gallery show. Outside of school and Nate on his couch, Dan saw neither hide nor hair of the world that he had slowly sunk into. Instead, he spent hours in front of a computer, or at a coffee shop with a notepad, trying to pour his thoughts into tangible, provoking prose. Nothing came to him that sounded right, and more often than not, he simply reflected. On Nate and Jenny dating, with Nate living with the Humphreys still. On Vanessa's mysterious relationship with a new guy, one she refused to give details about, but resulted in her common disappearances from his life. On Serena….

Serena, fresh out of promising new beginnings and friendship, was wrapped up in the beginnings with another man. Her relationship with Aaron… Dan had thought it would bother him a lot more than it actually did. He looked on at school, when Aaron would drop by at lunch, with only a little more than apathy. Where had the passion gone between them? Of all the couples sprouting through the UES, Dan had thought that he and Serena had a chance, a good chance, at lasting.

Chance… Guilt still flashed through him at unexpected moments. For the cynic that he prided himself to be, Dan Humphrey had always had a faithful allegiance to the promise and reward of love. He had gone through a miserable time coming to terms with how he and Serena had ended, and he had always thought himself about inflicting pain, causing loss. Dan had always judged the Upper East Siders for the games they played, and he had turned into one of them.

It was the main reason that Dan wasn't bothered by his new found isolation. He was still in shock about the fiasco with Blair. He was sufficiently chastised with the knowledge that he had purposefully manipulated imported parts of peoples' lives. Dan had ruined a chance for love. That was something he hadn't come to terms with. So he spent his time reflecting on everything but the absence of Blair Waldorf.

It hadn't helped his guilt at all when he found out from Serena, through Chuck of course, that the reason Blair and Chuck had been out to get Vanessa, had played with her head, was due to Vanessa starting it all. It baffled Dan that Vanessa had stooped to blackmailing Blair, especially about something as hurtful as Marcus's indecencies with his stepmother. Once again, Dan called himself out for judging the people on the UES so harshly, when it seems that people from Brooklyn were cut from the same cloth.

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It was a chilly afternoon, brisk. Dan was frequenting a coffee shop down the street from St. Jude's lately, taking his lunch breaks there, and trying to squeeze out a decent chapter. Well, paragraph. Actually, a decent sentence would be nice really. Nothing that flowed from pen to paper sounded right. He found himself scratching out everything, tearing up paper, throwing it all away.

Dan's hands hid his eyes from the coffee shop, from the weakness of his writing. His arms weighed heavy as they braced against the table he was sitting at. Nothing seemed right. Nothing made sense. He couldn't wrap his mind around the guilt he felt, couldn't understand why he was miserable at the fact that Blair Waldorf had vanished from sight.

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Blair Waldorf did not care that she wasn't acting like the Queen she knew she should be. It didn't matter anymore. She had been so set on denying her feelings towards Chuck that she had lost him in the end. She thought she could wait. Tried to believe that there would be excruciating pleasure in the knowledge of someday. But it was too hard to bear. Too hard to go to school, and see him across the halls. Too hard to see him at events, too hard to see him at Serena's. It would be too hard to be near him, and know she couldn't have him. And Blair Waldorf didn't do well when she was told that she couldn't have what she wanted.

So she ran. No one came running after her this time.

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Chuck was worried. Blair had disappeared. No one knew where she went. Well, her mother knew, and that maid of theirs. But no one was telling. Even Serena couldn't get it out of them. She wasn't taking it well, taking _them_ well. He knew it was going to be hard for them at first, being around each other, but not being with each other. It would be hard, after almost an entire year of learning, chasing, and longing.

He berated himself. He was just a self-fulfilling prophecy. He told himself he wasn't good enough for her, and then he went and proved it. Chuck didn't really think, forced himself not to think, when he started seeing other people publicly. Wanted to keep up appearances. Well, and get some ass. If he couldn't be with Blair, should everyone really expect him to remain celibate?

She didn't take it well. And it was all his fault.

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Another day, another lunch break filled with nothing. Dan was beginning to give up, never pick up a pen again. What was the point?

His dad told him this morning that he was looking sloppier each day. He rarely shaved. Stubble graced his cheeks. He wore his uniform, or a tee shirt and jeans. Who did he have to impress anymore?

Jenny told him to stop being 'emo'. That the lonely boy routine was getting old. Hell, he had even dropped off of Gossip Girl's radar. With no Queen B to stalk anymore, the gossip hag with no life had moved on to covering every inch of his sister's and Nate's relationship. Which was just gross, in Dan's opinion.

Dan knew how to solve his problem. Writers need to write reality, raw pain, emotion. It jumped off the page. He just wasn't ready to write out his own, to write about his own shortcomings, to express his regret, guilt, anxiety.

What would be the purpose in that? He wanted his works to have meaning, a purpose. What was the purpose in re-living pain?

His phone rang in his pocket, the vibration scaring him slightly, and the ring tone was loud enough to embarrass him slightly as other patron of the coffee shop turned to look at the disturbance. Dan quickly grabbed it out of his pocket, and didn't think to look at the front screen before trying to discreetly answer.

"Hello?"

The voice that traveled thousands of miles to get to his ear shocked Dan out of the stupor he had been in for weeks.

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"Cabbage Patch." The silence on the end of the line made Blair flinch.

She instantly regretted the dismissive, patronizing tone in her voice. Here she was, calling the one person who she thought could help her see reason, and she was creating tension from the first moment!

"Blair? Blair Waldorf?" The confusion in his voice was slightly amusing. At least he didn't sound angry or agitated.

"No, it's Princess Di from the grave." Jesus! A girl is gone for a few weeks, and people forget her voice. She reminded herself that sarcasm wouldn't be beneficial at the moment.

"Oh, um…," Dan cursed himself for sounding like a bumbling idiot, "Why are you calling? What's up?" What's up? Real smooth Dan, real suave. He couldn't help it. Why was Blair Waldorf calling him? After what he had done?

Blair didn't know how to answer, didn't know what to say for once. How did she explain this to him? She would throw herself off the Eiffel Tower before she admitted to Brooklyn, that she was well, lonely for something from her old life.

"You should feel lucky. You're the only one who has heard from me in weeks. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth Humphrey."

"That's why I'm confused, Waldorf. Why are you calling a 'slob from Brooklyn," why not Serena? Why not Chuck? Nate? Hazel? Isabel?"

She still didn't know how to answer him.


End file.
